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Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

theguardian.com

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Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#471

Post by gh0stcat »

robertakarobin wrote: post #400
gh0stcat wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I have dealt with pretty severe depression for most of my adult life. I am only starting to have periods of coming out when I realized that most of depressed feelings come from a place of ego. I have an identity of who I am and what I like, and I seek things in the external world which might provide meaning for me. For me, it's because I always sought value from the things around me, rather than…

I hope you can understand that this and other comments about needing to find meaning and needing to sit with inner feelings... It feels patronizing. I have spent tremendous amounts of time and energy analyzing my feelings and looking for meaningful experiences. I've sought relief in meditation, religion, therapy, yoga, travel, art, etc. Most people probably have in one way or another. It's not rocket science to know…

I'm sorry it came off that way, I really didn't intend it to be, it was actually a self call out because I actually never learned as a child to sit with my inner feelings. I attribute that to being more sensitive and probably more intelligent than my siblings and acting as a buffer for my parents and basically only ever wanting to make other people happy, I never developed an inner world like other kids do.

Also I noticed... yoga, travel, art, those are still external. Even meditation can be if you approach it from a standpoint of like... one that is about forming your ego around it rather than being present... not sure if this makes sense. Like you can approach anything from a negative or place of wanting to 'fix' yourself, which ruins the experience imo. For me I would ruin things that were supposed to be fun because I would tell myself I should do this because it's good for me.

That being said, there are really low days still when I will feel absolutely nothing, I will think to myself... if this psychological pain is so intense, why should I keep going? I don't have answers for that. I genuinely just have to make it through the day. I understand that with the pressures of a family and kids, it's not one of those things where you can easily tap out, medication makes sense for that. I was just trying to share how I feel because honestly for me there isn't anyone in my life who I can relate with on this deep of a level... of these feelings, and it's really alienating in itself.

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#472

Post by tcj_phx »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #419
tcj_phx wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing your mom's experience with big pharma's then-new wonder-drug. > Somehow, I doubt there is much motivation to look for economically inconvenient and unnerving side-effects in some demographics, Robert Whitaker examined the pharmaceutical industry's ideological capture of conventional psychiatry in his third book, Psychiatry Under the Influence. https://robertwhitakerbooks.com/psychiatry-under-the-in…

Yup. There's too much institutional inertia to adopt evidence-based approaches. I've tried 19 antidepressants over about 15 years. Stuck with mirtazapene-induced obesity that doesn't qualify for GLP-1 coverage, so I can either be fat, broke, or crushingly catatonic.

"Institutional inertia" is a great term, thanks.

> I've tried 19 antidepressants over about 15 years. Stuck with mirtazapene [...]

Have you tried any anti-serotonin interventions? (chatbot in comment link below)

Mirtazapene is a "tetracyclic antidepressant". I think the development of antidepressants went MAOI -> Tricyclic -> tetracyclic -> SSRI. My chatbot transcript said the SSRI's are marginal drugs, but "SSRIs are much safer in overdose" than the earlier drugs.

My understanding is that the MAOIs were reasonably-effective at bringing people out of an acute depression, but they interacted with high-tyramine foods (fine cheese, etc) to cause high blood pressure. Reversible MAOIs are less problematic than the non-reversible ones. Methylene Blue [MB] is the most ubiquitous of the reversible MAOIs. I felt a definite warming effect with my first MB microdose (a fraction of a milligram), but I've never noticed anything from larger doses.

My comments on this thread might be helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46000812

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#473

Post by EtienneDeLyon »

robertakarobin wrote: post #108

I was very young when my mom started Prozac but do remember how angry and sad she was before compared to after. Years later there was a time when me and my sister noticed our mom was acting a bit strange -- more snappish and irritable than usual, and she even started dressing differently. Then at dinner she announced proudly that she had been off Prozac for a month. My sister and I looked at each other and at the sam…

A seven-year old child is being given a brain-altering drug? I am very happy such drugs did not exist when I was seven years old.

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#474

Post by undeveloper »

ckw wrote: post #231
ksenzee wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the black box warning has nothing to do with long-term effects of the medication. It was added specifically because kids were killing themselves within weeks of starting the medication. > This is one of the most shocking things I have ever read. Good grief. I hope you're exaggerating for effect.

Death is a long term effect. And I am not exaggerating. I did not feel the need to list any of the myriad other potential long term effects because death seemed sufficiently serious. Edit: in case the OP is reading, I should say also that the package insert won’t mention many other potential long term effects addressed in the literature, like extra pyramidal symptoms (akathisia, Parkinsonism, dystonia, tardive dyskin…

right which is why they are treating the depression (which leads to suicidal tendencies) which is a symptom of depression, with prozac. that's what the prozac is for. to prevent death

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#475

Post by undeveloper »

EtienneDeLyon wrote: post #473
robertakarobin wrote: post #108

I was very young when my mom started Prozac but do remember how angry and sad she was before compared to after. Years later there was a time when me and my sister noticed our mom was acting a bit strange -- more snappish and irritable than usual, and she even started dressing differently. Then at dinner she announced proudly that she had been off Prozac for a month. My sister and I looked at each other and at the sam…

A seven-year old child is being given a brain-altering drug? I am very happy such drugs did not exist when I was seven years old.

the alternative is depression. brain altering drugs seem preferrable

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#476

Post by undeveloper »

mvdtnz wrote: post #470
robertakarobin wrote: post #108

I was very young when my mom started Prozac but do remember how angry and sad she was before compared to after. Years later there was a time when me and my sister noticed our mom was acting a bit strange -- more snappish and irritable than usual, and she even started dressing differently. Then at dinner she announced proudly that she had been off Prozac for a month. My sister and I looked at each other and at the sam…

Sorry but giving a 7 year old prozac is psycho behaviour.

do you genuinely think depression is preferable? suicidality?

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#477

Post by undeveloper »

slantedview wrote: post #159

My understanding with SSRIs and other depression meds is that they are hit and miss for anyone. I have a family member who, as a teen, suffered from severe depression and didn't want to live. Therapy wasn't able to help - it was actually the therapist who recommended more drastic measures such as medication. And so they tried Prozac and that worked. Having seen the reversal myself, it's hard to understand how this is…

It is extremely hit and miss. My understanding is that for those with "shit life syndrome", prozac is generally ineffective, but for those with genetic predispositions it can be extremely helpful. the catch is that the two are not exclusive, and those with genetic predispositions to depression may never have it, and people with bad life circumstances may feel more stable mentally with prozac and better equipped to tackle life's challenges.

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#478

Post by undeveloper »

jacobgkau wrote: post #119
monero-xmr wrote: post #12

SSRIs literally saved my life, no question about it. Night and day difference, from daily panic attacks destroying my life, happiness, and career, to being almost completely better in 2 weeks after starting. I tried exercise and diet and meditation and you name it, for years! , before I gave medication a go. Do not care what the science says. It 100% worked for me. Please get help if you need it, tens of millions of…

Had you tried a placebo without knowing that it was a placebo? No? Then your story's irrelevant to whether the medication's working (yes, even on you) any better than a placebo would.

current evidence suggests that prozac is effective well over placebo for adults

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#479

Post by undeveloper »

drekipus wrote: post #319
collingreen wrote: post #313

This should get locked. People are horrible.

Depression is literally a lack of meaning and beauty. This gets imposed on us by society through social norms, and increasingly not working for people But rather than fixing society, we will impose experimental drugs on kids. In some cases altering their lives irreversibily It absolutely should be discussed and openly talked about

> Depression is literally a lack of meaning and beauty.

actually, "depression" or major depressive disorder is literally a mental illness, which has a genetic link. it is not a "lack of meaning or beauty" -- to suggest every depressed person who killed themselves had no "meaning" for life is deeply disrespectful to every parent, child, sibling, partner that killed themselves.

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#480

Post by undeveloper »

Razengan wrote: post #346
jdietrich wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Like lobotomies. What do people think of them now? Lobotomy was in fact an effective treatment (albeit with extremely severe side-effects), but we now have much better and safer treatments available. The abandonment of lobotomy was fundamentally driven by the invention of effective antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilisers. Neurosurgery is still offered to an extremely small proportion of patients sufferi…

The discredited procedure that was banned in the Soviet Union before the United States? That was used disproportionately against women? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy

well, yes, it did work. the side effects are horrible, and often the disease was better than the cure, but it worked, similar to how being dead also is extremely effective for managing depression.
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